THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN KPOP: YOUTUBE

A look at how your favourite artists use YouTube to promote, advertise and engage fans

EXO's Suho reading this blog post. CREDIT: biotist.blogspot.com

Just like any other social media, YouTube is used as an essential source of exposure, whether the creator is an individual, or a multi-million dollar company. ​Of course, YouTube is one platform which the world of K-Pop is heavily invested in. Primarily, the website is used to host singer's music videos. But how is this different from any other western release? 

Leading to the day of release, channels tend to upload teasers of the music video and album onto YouTube (and other platforms, but this post will focus on YouTube content). This includes the likes of:

- Snippets of the actual music video - Individual member video teasers - Group video teaser(s) - Album music spoiler/sampler (short clips of audio of the songs on the album) - Behind the scenes videos of filming/photoshoot - Full videos having relation to the upcoming video

You may be wondering, why put in the effort? One word: hype. Every subsequent teaser builds up fan excitement, getting them to talk about their favourite artist, whether it be on YouTube or not. E-word of mouth gets around YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, generating even more anticipation for the eventual drop.

But it doesn't stop there. YouTube is often used as a form of tracking the popularity of a group and can sometimes turn into somewhat of a competition. More often than not, fans of a group will collaborate 'mass streaming events', usually during the first 24 hours of the music video release, attempting to amass the highest amount of views in 1 day. Regardless if the fandom is attempting to break a world-record or just the group's personal best, YouTube and its streaming culture in the K-Pop fandom ultimately drives up exposure and engagement for the artists. It is also encouraged by the entertainment companies, with extra content (dance practice, behind the scenes, etc.) being released to fans once a streaming goal (certain number of views) determined by the company is reached.

It isn't always about the music, however. Another large part of the K-pop world are variety show appearances! These include the likes of talk shows, game-shows, music competitions, and many more! Clips of highlights of group's appearances on certain shows are often uploaded onto YouTube for fans to enjoy, acting as another way for people to discover new artists.

Apart from official videos, YouTube also hosts other forms of content for fans such as 'fan-cams' (videos of a performance shot by a fan) and compilations. These works of the fans can also bring exposure to a group, with a prominent example in girl group EXID's Hani (read here!).

And that wraps up today's post! What do you guys think about the use of YouTube in K-pop promo? Feel free to leave your thoughts and any suggestions on how to make future posts better for all :-) ! Thanks for reading and catch you guys next week where we'll move onto the next topic: Instagram.

​Isaac, 13/08/19 (last updated, 26/08/19)